Getting Arduino and Arduino-like boards working properly under Linux can be a troublesome task if you are not familiar with how Linux works.

So I am going to introduce you to some of the basic tools you will need to work out why your board isn't working as you'd like it to work.

I don't know about you, but I have a huge pile of different Arduino-like boards here. (I have so many because I need to test UECIDE with them - or that's what I tell the "bank manager"). Many is the time I will have more than one of them plugged in to my computer. Often times I have programmed one of them with some code only to find it's not worked - and why hasn't it worked? Because I have had the wrong serial port selected in the IDE.

My latest acquisition, the Dragino Yun Shield is actually quite a nice bit of kit. It's the Linux portion of an Arduino Yun placed on a shield, so you can attach it to any board of your choosing.

It provides both a UART and an SPI connection to whatever it is plugged in to. And that includes chipKIT boards.

... and maybe the real Yun too.

So there's the Arduino Yun. That's quite a nice concept - an embedded Linux computer (MIPS based, YAY!) and microcontroller combined on one board.  Just such a shame it's an Atmel microcontroller and not a PIC32.